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Antares achieves zero-power criticality at INL
Leveraging more than $140 million in private capital fundraising, over 322,000 square feet of operational manufacturing space, and multifaceted partnerships with the Departments of Energy and Defense, reactor start-up Antares has become the first company involved in the Reactor Pilot Program to achieve zero-power fueled criticality—a full month ahead of the July 4 deadline set by President Trump’s Executive Order 14301.
This milestone, announced yesterday, was achieved with the company’s Mark-0: a sodium heat-pipe-cooled, TRISO-fueled microreactor. The Mark-0 is a forerunner to the company’s flagship design, which it calls the R1. For Antares, this development represents a key validation of its reactor physics, control systems, and supply chain.
Zhilin Chen, Masao Matsuyama, Shuming Peng, Yang Yang, Yu Li, Shenghan Cheng
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 74 | Number 3 | October 2018 | Pages 246-251
Technical Note | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2018.1462086
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Tritium release behavior in a tungsten sample after exposing to tritium ions with energy about 200 eV created by glow discharge has been studied by both β-ray–induced X-ray spectrometry (BIXS) and imaging plate (IP). The tungsten sample was heated stepwise in a vacuum vessel at temperatures from 400 to 1000 K in experiments, and results obtained from both BIXS and IP measurements showed that the amount of tritium absorbed on the sample surface decreased more than 97% after heating at 800 K. Both intensity and shape of the measured X-ray spectrum have been specified to estimate the change of the tritium depth profile after each heat treatment. Besides, the Monte Carlo Stopping and Range of Ions in Matter (SRIM) code has been introduced to calculate the initial tritium depth profile just after being irradiated by glow discharge. Analysis shows that tritium atoms locate around 3 nm in depth before annealing, and tritium distribution becomes uniform in the near-surface layers (around several nanometers) gradually after heat treatment. At about 800 K, the relative tritium concentration in the near-surface layers reaches its maximum value compared with tritium in the deeper part of the tungsten sample. Then more and more tritium diffuses deeper into the sample as the temperature increases.